Week 05

160404 – 160410 — Total classroom hours: 17.75

Rails. Hours and hours and of rails. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought that there would be a ‘break’ from the rails portion of the Bloccit project and I would have time to review it. That’s definitely not the case, I mean it’s all Rails until the end of the foundations block. But, what Bloc is doing with its curriculum is pretty helpful in that the rhythm is to work on a new section of Rails, then as the assignment you repeat those steps you had just worked on to implement another feature. I appreciate the teaching strategy, it allows me to do as much as I can from memory, and then when I get stuck I can review the checkpoint material. During the checkpoint material there are definitely moments where it feels like I’m not doing much more than transcribing into my text editor (I use Sublime with a bunch of add-ons that my good friend Corey helped me set up) what is in the Bloc browser. But, I’ve found that even doing something as simple as changing the letter used as the variable forces me to be conscious of what I’m typing and what the code is doing.

One thing I have had a little trouble with this week is the Codewar-based ‘Programming Reinforcement Checkpoint’. I spend 4 hours on only one challenge on Saturday and I still have some work to do on it before it’s even close to being done. After that I still have the other two challenges to complete. I don’t have a problem challenging myself, and I know that even the process of finding the resolution is making me a better programmer, but at some point there is a concern about how much time I am spending on each problem. I mean, 4 hours, that’s nearly one quarter of the entire time I have for the week, spent on one third of one checkpoint. Thats a lot of fractions in one sentence, but basically I feel like it’s taking me too much of my time.

Because the actual coursework is focussing on Rails, these three (Level 6) katas are the first time I’ve worked with Ruby since the last (level 7) katas a few weeks ago. I guess I have a hard time understanding the thought process as to how solving three katas at level 7 qualifies me for anything at level 6? Whatever reasoning Bloc has, its not working for me. The way I see it, there are several ways to approach a problem like this. I could just punt through the level 6 katas, probably having to run every step of the process by my mentor. I could just complain about it, how it’s not fair, too hard of a challenge, etcetera. Or, I could grab the problem by the horns and figure out how to resolve it. I’ll be doing the later. I plan on taking the next few weeks and working on more level 8 & 7 katas, on my own time, outside of class, until I have worked up the knowledge of Ruby to more efficiently solve the level 6 katas that Bloc has assigned.

No educational structure works perfectly for every student. I feel that curriculum is an outline of what needs to happen in order to accomplish a larger goal. Its up to the student to make that curriculum work within their own style of learning. So far I am very happy with what Bloc has had me do, and I will happily work a few extra hours a week on my own to fill some gaps. At the end of the day the goal is to get a job as a programmer, any and all experience I can obtain along the way will only help me achieve that goal.